Lessons in Mourning: Elsa Bernstein’s Memoir of Theresienstadt

Abstract

The woman who was born Elsa Porges in 1866, became Elsa Bernstein when she married the lawyer, dramatist, and literary critic Max Bernstein in 1890, published plays, poems, and short stories under the name of Ernst Rosmer, was deported in 1942 to Theresienstadt and died in 1949 at the age of eighty-two, has had a curious afterlife. A general neglect and brief bursts of spontaneous interest have been determined largely by the question of whether she can be considered modern, her status as a woman playwright, and the issue of her Jewishness. In particular, these three sets of blinkers have effectively prevented the text that was published posthumously as Das Leben als Drama: Erinnerungen an Theresienstadt from being read and appreciated as the consummate literary masterpiece it is. This article takes issue with previous accounts of the text and seeks to show how, by a careful manipulation of techniques which are familiar from modernist texts, Bernstein is able to render the reality of Theresienstadt in a way few others have achieved.